She sat on the cold stone when the rain started to fall. There was no wind and the water felt almost comfortable as it ran down her face.

‘It’s only the rain,’ she thought and looked down on the stone. There was a simple cross at the head of it, nothing fancy, nothing expensive. It had been hard enough to pay for the funeral…

She felt like saying something, but couldn’t really. What was there to say anyway? Absentmindedly she plucked a leaf of weed from the side of the stone plate. Her gaze drifted over the writing on the plate, over the date. Ten years to the day now. Ten years in which she hadn’t quite understood what had killed her sister. But now she knew!

Back then, fate had killed her, bad luck. Think of the tiny chance of getting that particular disease for which no cure existed. Yet. Now, years later, the mechanisms of the disease were finally understood. She had found out about that accidentally, while searching for something completely different on the web. And there it was: The infection, the symptoms, the cure. What would heal you and what would kill you off. A certain type of blood pressure drug would, but who could have known back then?

‘Killed by the wrong prescription,’ she thought, ‘poor Lilly.’ But there was no humour in her thoughts when she finally rose and said good-bye to her sister, as she did every year. It was still raining when she left the cemetery.

It was late when Alan came home. He put his bag down and then went to see what his parents were up to. His mother was nowhere to be seen, but his father sat in the kitchen, weeping.

“Ah, son,” he said when he saw Alan. “Howsyourdaybeen?” Alan raised an eyebrow. It seemed that his dad was in a talkative mood today.

“Thanks, fine,” he replied. “We learned about nucleophile reactions in chemistry and started reading Dickens.”

“Ah,” his father said, some tears dropping from his chin onto the table. “Pass me the bowl, will ya?”

Alan reached for the bowl, carefully avoiding getting near the big knife his father was wielding. When he had passed it over, his father used the knife to push the chopped onions into the bowl.

“Hey ho!” came a loud voice from behind Alan. His mother had nearly bumped into him when she entered the kitchen.

“You’ve been picking snails from the salad,” Alan observed and peeked into the bowl that she was carrying. Two dozen snails crawled in there.

“Yum!” said his mother, and with a swift motion she emptied the bowl over the onions. ”You ok?” she asked him, poking him in the side. “Look a little bluish.”

“I don’t!” It was an old and ridiculous belief that spending too much time in sunlight would make your skin look blue or even turn you into stone. In fact, his skin looked as green as ever, even after extensive sun-bathing. He had skipped math class once to try that out.

His father added pepper to the bowl and stirred the contents with a big spoon. “Ready!” he finally proclaimed. Alan sighed. There was no way to get around this meal, and he had to admit that he had always loved snail salad when he was younger. Still, it seemed strangely inappropriate now. But what could he do?! He was an ogre and that ruled ordering pizza completely out.

He had twenty minutes until the end. Twenty minutes to try and stop this—and he didn’t know if he could stay awake that long. End of the world or not, his eyelids were dropping every minute or two, only to startle him when his head fell forward. But those brief moments of adrenaline lasted only for seconds…

Where was he? Right, the secondary matrix. There was a bug in the secondary matrix. Actually, there were probably hundreds of them, but most of them were old and friendly residents who had been dealt with years ago and did no harm. This new one was different, having reared its ugly head less than two days ago.

Thierry went through the loading routine again and tried to understand where the failure sat, from where it caused the secondary matrix to influence the manoeuvre thrusters, something that should never ever happen. Yet it did, turning the solar power station ever so slightly away from the sun. Half of a degree per hour, but by now that seriously threatened the station’s power output.

Thierry took another sip of coffee, but he was long past the stage where that actually helped. The same was true for really loud music and really cold water.

It was 31 hours since the station had started to turn away from the light and 27 since Thierry had awoken to the threat of a total power failure. He had already traced the fault from the routine update three days ago to the tertiary environmental systems, only to find that it had triggered a completely unrelated bug there, which had been in the system for years as well.

Thierry cursed. Of course, this had to happen exactly now. Not a week ago, when three other programmers had been aboard. Not next month, when the installation of the orbital cable would have been completed. It happened now, when Thierry was alone and the station supplied the one process with energy that no earth-bound power plant could stand in for. The Indian cable weaver depended on the energy from Sol II that it had bought with a 100% delivery guarantee.

Sixteen minutes until the power would drop under the 25% mark and the weaver would not be able to hold the lift cable anymore. It would simply drop down to earth and might even take the weaver with it.

How much of Earth’s surface was actually covered with water? Thierry hoped that it would hit the ocean but in his mind he saw the cable hitting Kolkata, splitting the city in half and leaving only ruins.

The secondary matrix hadn’t been updated for three month. But the controller unit of the energy couplings had been recently. Thierry sighed. What else could he do? Get out in a suit and push?

Twelve minutes. He pulled up the diff file of the last checkin and started glancing over the changes.

He carefully took out a book from the pile, and then another one. The pile didn’t collapse, being held in position by a larger book that now was the ceiling of a new gap. He looked at the title of the book. “The Voyage of elder people in the postmodern state,” it read. No, that wasn’t right, but close.

Dr. Panshin fastened the lamp, which had moved out of focus, on his head and looked at the shelf again. If this was E-L, he would have to go down and a further twenty metres into the mountain of books. He sighed, turned around and grabbed the saw. Removing the shelf panel in front of him was actually hard work, and he had to be careful to not damage the book behind it. Dr. Panshin put the saw on the metal and started to draw it back and forth in the narrow space that he had been able to clear between “The Voyage of a -” and “The Voyage of that -”.

“A transmitter,” he muttered. “If I only could have a transmitter. A small one, really.” Of course he could have brought one, but that would have done him no good. If hyper-technology worked on Library, he wouldn’t need to mine his way through billions of books.

“Jane, what were you thinking?” Well, what had the Intelligence been thinking? There had been a lot of academic speculation, but Dr. Panshin thought the novel “The duty of a machine” actually captured it best. Because the point was, Jane knew what was coming. The Central Intelligence of Library could probably have saved itself before the lights went out. But instead it chose to save the books, printed them off and stacked them back to back, front to front, thousands of Billions of them.

“The Voyage of the Beagle,” Dr. Panshin murmured, “here we come.” He removed the shelf and started to take out the next row of books.

The warm spring sun fell on the garden which stretched all around the huge house. A lot of trees threw soft shadows and between them everything was green with grass. A white spot sat there on the ground, moving slowly, eating a little bit of grass here and there. Without a sound a shadow moved nearer, but the white spot didn’t seem to care. And then a scream sounded through the garden, startling nearby birds, and a shovel came crashing down on the white spot.

“Ha! Gotcha!” Mrs. Carmichael breathed heavily and looked down on the dead rabbit. The animal, not so white in its current form, twitched. A small sound emanated from it, almost like the ringing of small bells. Then Mrs. Carmichael heard a distinct „plop“.

“Oh no, not again, you little bugger!” The dead animal was gone and two bright-white rabbits sat on the ground, oblivious to their surroundings and carefully chewing on the grass. Mrs. Carmichael took a step back and almost fell over another rabbit which was slowly wandering around behind her. She shrieked and looked over to the side of the house where more white spots poured out of the side of a large shed. “No, no, you haven‘t…”

In the distance the bells of the village’s church rang six. “No, I can’t stand another night,” Mrs. Carmichael sounded seriously worried and headed back to the house. It was almost seven when a van noisily made its way up the hill road towards the house. It came to a creaking halt in front of the main entrance where Mrs Carmichael already waited.

A man climbed out of the car. “About time,” she greeted him.

“And a good day to you, too,” he replied and looked interested at the white rabbit coming slowly around the left corner of the house.

“So, where are they?” asked Mrs. Carmichael.

“They, Ma‘am?”

“The wolves.”

“Oh, that’s just the company name. We don’t actually work with animals.” He grabbed a bag from the car and shut the door. The company logo read “House of Wolves”. And below it: “pest control”.

The wind blew over the rocks, over the sand and the small, crouching bushes which were desperately clinging to the ground. There was always wind, it seemed, nowadays. Terraforming. It will pass after the first few decades, they say.

The body lay in a small valley. A river bed, eons ago. She was clad in her native red, a red that was now rapidly retreating, being replaced by more yellowish tones.

They got her in the end. After all this years they got her, but she didn’t mind. Because what was there left to fight for? The wind blew over her fragile looking body, but she didn’t mind. She was gone.

Slowly then, as if to give them exactly what they wanted, the white-haired late-comer in the long black coat and turned-around collar rose from the bench at the very back of the room. The scar on his forehead—it was in the shape of a cross—was bright in the light of the kerosene lamps.

He started to walk down the aisle and slowly, almost looking unintentional, the first people sitting in each row moved a bit away from him. A very quiet, nervous murmur began to spread.

“Morgan!” The priest growled in a deep voice. “What do you want?”

The man took the two steps up to the altar and turned around to face the priest. He didn’t throw a single glance at the crowd, just looked at the priest silently.

“Hand her over and we‘re all gonna live through the next five minutes,” he finally said. “Well, you know what I mean,” he added.

Just as he didn’t throw a glance at the crowd of believers, he didn’t throw a glance at the girl who was bound on the altar, blood slowly dripping from her wrist into a bowl.

Morgan didn’t answer; he simply pulled back a side of his coat, revealing a belt full of wooden stakes. “I could kill you all, easily,” he said in his quiet voice. “But these days I can hardly be bothered anymore.”

The priest looked at him, seemed to estimate his chances of taking the hunter out. But he was no elder, he hadn’t been turned for a decade yet. No-one in the small underground church had.

They continued to stare at each other, and then finally the priest signalled someone to free the girl. She was barely conscious and had to heavily lean on Morgan. Together they walked down the aisle towards the raw wooden doors.

Morgan put his hand over her head and kept walking when the door exploded into a whirl of splinters, and laser beams cut through the half-darkness. He didn’t waver when the troop of marines stormed in as if this didn’t concern him. Morgan, the vampire hunter, left the church as screams sounded through the room and the first crossbow bolts flew through the air.

A lot to do. Busy day. The construction site was new, and it was his job to get the organisation right. There was to be no chaos at the site of Her Majesty’s new summer palace. He would see to that.

“What’s coming in today?” he yelled. No need to yell really, the office wasn’t that big and his voice produced a kind of hollow sound. But it always startled his aide, and he took great pleasure from that.

The aide looked annoyed. A young lad who didn’t really know the business. Yet. He would see to that.

“Stones and grass,” he replied and moved around the small desk. There wasn’t much light coming through the opening in the wall but sun beams fell through the window in the ceiling.

“Good, good. Have the reports finished by lunch,” he told the aide. There was a wooshing sound from outside and something fell through a second opening in the ceiling. A packet landed at his feet, a heavy packet judging from the sound.

“Ten minutes late,” he muttered and looked at the package. ‘Well, actually a day late,’ he decided upon seeing what it was. ‘A day and ten minutes.’

“Dragonflies! What can you expect from them!?“ His aide looked unhappily at the packet and tried to back away, but it was too late. “You will bring this to the workers at the third level,” he told him and watched the unhappiness increase on his aide’s face.

As much fun as it was, there was also a chance to correct his aide. “Get rid of that look on your face! You are a worker of Her Majesty. Don’t tell me that this task is below you!”

His aide mumbled something, sighed and moved to the packet. He bent down on all four legs, lifted it and slowly made his way out of the office, nearly knocking the doors from the hinges while doing so.

“Watch it!” he yelled at the retreating packet. “Or you are buying Her Majesty’s construction bureau a new teapot office! Those aren’t so easy to come by these day, you know!” Worker ants, what can you expect from them!

My name is Michael John Everard and I have 19 hours, 21 minutes and 46 seconds before I will be murdered. Well no, not really. Just kidding. How would I know? Since I first set a foot on this soil, in this city, I have been more dead than alive anyway. At every corner, someone could ram a dagger into my back for no particular reason. Every passing guard could question me and discover that I am not Michael John Everard at all. But I had known what awaited me here, and I accepted the risk.

It was nearly the time of the evening prayers when the whole city freezes for a moment, everyone’s eyes on the citadel. I left the café I had been sitting at and slowly walked down the street. Towards the citadel the hill gently rose, and in this part of the city the streets grew smaller. My mission was important and dangerous, and the survival of the whole city could depend upon it. The street ended in a grocery shop right in front of me, but next to it there was a small passage, just wide enough for me to fit through. And beyond the dark passage lay a small garden, fenced by stone walls and a magnificent view over the city.

I casually walked into the garden, stopped to look over the city for a moment and then made my way to a bench at the back of the garden. In the shadow of a big tree I sat down, the last strokes of the sun on the ground before me. As I heard the bells of the citadel I felt beneath the bench. And felt, more to the right. There were some rests of duct tape but no book.

I didn’t look under the bench. I stood up and started to walk. The garden had two entries, but it didn’t really matter which one I took. I just walked on.

My name is Michael John Everard and I am as good as dead. I walked out of the garden and never looked back.

The rat was dead, and it had been for some time, judging by the smell. Sam hesitated, but then carried on. Her personal discomfort didn’t mean much here and now. She had to get a blood sample of the dead animal. One of millions who were lying dead in the streets and sewers of New Cartagena. What had killed them? There were people who didn’t quite share the governments idea of the reasons.

Sam managed to extract a blood sample from the animal and put it into a small glass. She also removed some hairs, then hesitated again. She probably should cut the rat open, see if it had eaten something special. She had done this before, but it had been years since university.